Azerbaijani
author Husein Abbaszade (1923- ) a veteran of World
War II and recipient of 12 state medals, has written extensively
about his experiences as a soldier in the Soviet Army. Here,
Abbaszade reminds us that the reality of war is still all too
familiar for Azerbaijanis.
_____

Nobody told us that we were really on the verge of war - not
our commanders, not the local newspapers. They all lied to us.
They always said that the Soviet Union's involvement was abrupt
and that we had been taken by surprise. But it simply wasn't
true-I know from personal experience. It was the first of a long
string of lies that I would encounter as a new recruit in the
Soviet army.

Photo: Husein Abbaszade, 1945.

On June 14,
1941, I was drafted by the Soviet Military Committee, given a
medical examination and told to report for duty the next day. When I did,
they immediately shipped me off to Tetroskariyo (Aghbulag) village
in Georgia where the Communications Battalion No. 442 was stationed.
Many Azerbaijani soldiers were located there.

A week later, on June 21, the official day of my enlistment,
they suddenly announced that the war had started.

The
new recruits were shocked. It gradually dawned on us that they
had known all along that we were on the verge of war. That's
why we had all been summoned and processed so quickly. We were
supposed to have a big celebration and be sworn in, but when
the news broke, everything was canceled. I was 19 years old at
the time.

Photo:
Aviation club in Baku, 1940

Our battalion
was detached to the North Caucasus Military Circle. We were trained
to operate communications from planes. We also were taught Morse
code.

During our parachute training, some of us were injured; some
broke their legs and some even died. I was wounded and had to
return to Baku to recuperate at the Sochi Hospital. Later, I
was sent to technical school to train in anti-aircraft artillery
for a year. There I was given the rank of Junior Lieutenant and
sent to Leningrad.

Photo Anti-aircraft defense
classes, Baku, 1940.

Map of Hitler's planned
attack on Baku's oil fields, scheduled for September 25, 1942,
but cancelled after the Soviets defeated the Germans at Stalingrad
earlier that year. Hitler felt that if he could access Baku's
oil, he would win World War II. Map: National Archives. English
names: AI.

At the beginning of the war, soldiers from Turkic-speaking regions
such as Azerbaijan and Central Asia had immense problems because
most of them couldn't speak Russian. The commanders, all being
Russians, of course, spoke only Russian and had little tolerance
for those who didn't. When the soldiers couldn't understand what
was going on, the Russian commanders insulted, abused them and
even punished them. I was one of the lucky few who knew Russian.

Eventually, we went to Berlin. I was fighting in the Army's 59th
Division. For my service as a commander of the anti-aircraft
gun platoon, I was awarded the "Order of the Red Star".
The highest rank I achieved during the war was Senior Lieutenant
with the responsibility as Deputy Battery Commander.

Memories of WarIf someone says
he's not afraid of war, it's a lie.
He's absolutely
wrong. When you go to the front
for the first time, it's so horrible-you're scared of everything.
You see soldiers dying all over the place, tanks exploding, cannons
shooting, bombs dropping. As time passes, you get used to it
all. Your feelings, your nerves, your emotions-all become numb.
After a while, it all seems so commonplace.

During the war, if anyone tried to flee during battle, the commanders
had orders to kill him. The military leaders demanded absolute
obedience as any defections would completely undermine their
authority and jeopardize the entire unit. They shot any runaway
soldier just to set an example for the rest of the men.

Photo:
Marines
from Baku headed for the war front in 1942. National Archives.

Sometimes the conditions we fought under were grueling; other
times, less so. We were often short of guns. Often two soldiers
shared the same weapon. Food was a severe problem most of the
time. I've seen soldiers so hungry they stole food from each
other.

Once when I was in the hospital, there was another wounded soldier
lying in the bed next to mine. He asked me to scratch his foot
so I raised the blanket only to discover that his leg had been
amputated. I was shocked, but I didn't want him to notice, so
I began scratching the mattress. He started shouting at me, "Why
don't you scratch it? I can't feel it." Obviously, the nerves
were still sensitive even though the limb itself had been amputated.
The wounded soldier had forgotten that he no longer had a leg.

Sometimes I'm asked if I had a girlfriend during the war. I'll
tell you-we were in Germany at the time. It was late March 1945.
During the war, it was a big deal to receive a letter from home.
In my case, it had been such a long time since I had received
any word from my family.

A beautiful Russian girl named Antonina used to bring letters
to us soldiers. I would always ask her if there were any letters
for me, and she would reply that if ever there were, she would
bring them with great pleasure, but it never happened.

Soon afterward, the Germans bombed us; Antonina was killed during
the attack. I was so broken when we buried her. Another girl
in our regiment told me that Antonina had fallen in love with
me, and that she had arranged to bring letters to our regiment
just to have the chance to see me. I'll never forget her.

The war taught me a lot. Some say that war makes people savage
and barbaric. But I think the exact opposite happens. War makes
people more sensitive. War teaches you what hunger, pain, poverty
and death are all about. It teaches you what it means to be separated
from your homeland, your family, your friends.

Azerbaijan's Contribution
Even when Russians write about the war, they admit that Baku's
oil greatly contributed to the outcome of the war. In 1942, for
example, about 70 percent of all Soviet tanks, airplanes and
armored vehicles were operating with Baku oil.

A munitions factory in Baku also played an important role in
supplying the Soviet Army with various kinds of guns. It was
named after Lieutenant Pyotr Petrovich Schmidt, a German who
helped to organize the October Revolution (1917). When the men
left for war, the women took their places in the factories.

Azerbaijan also provided various foodstuffs, not to mention soldiers
themselves. Approx-imately 700,000 Azeris fought in the war;
nearly 400,000 of them died. This was an enormous sacrifice when
you consider that the total population in Azerbaijan at that
time was only about 3.27 million. My older brother was among
the victims.

Azerbaijan made an incredible contribution to the war despite
the fact that not a single battle was fought on its land and
not a single bomb was dropped on its cities.

During the war, few in the international community knew that
Azerbaijanis were fighting in the war. They only heard about
the Russians. True, Russia played a leading role, but there were
14 other republics within the Soviet Union that supplied soldiers
and guns, too.

Hitler had his eye on Azerbaijan's oil, convinced that if he
could capture Baku, the Germans would win the war. He had battle
plans already drawn up to attack Baku on September 25, 1942.
Then his defeat in Stalingrad brought the German advance to an
abrupt halt. Who knows if Hitler had captured Baku's oil, whether
the war might have had an entirely different outcome?

War's End
In 1945, when the German officers realized that they were losing
the war, they started fighting in civilian clothes, hiding themselves
and shooting at us from attics-just like the Serbs are doing
today. I lost one of my friends during one such episode. His
death affected me deeply. How tragic it is to die when you're
so close to victory and after you've gone through so much. I
myself was wounded on April 21; victory was declared on
May 9.

At first, I was taken to a hospital in Hindenburg. Then Stalin
gave the order that all officers were to be transferred to Soviet
hospitals. When we were heading back to the Soviet Union, we
were told that we would go through Baku, so I asked the commander
if I could leave the train for just a few moments to see my family
when we arrived. My mother was very ill at the time and I wanted
so much to see her. But the commander wouldn't allow it. When
we arrived in Baku, I could do nothing but lie down in the train,
crying and cursing my commander.

The train used to stop at night so that the wounded could rest.
When we were in Krapotkina, we heard shooting. The soldiers began
to shout that it must be the German Fascists. But after paying
closer attention, we realized that the voices were coming from
crowds of people who had gathered. "Victory! Victory! We
won!" they were yelling.

Russian women brought food onto the train for us. One of them
stroked my hair and started to cry, saying that she had lost
her son in the war.

I saw another old woman with a small boy beside her. They came
up to me and the boy asked her: "My dad is fighting, too,
isn't he?" The woman just stroked his hair. After the boy
went over to talk to other soldiers, the woman told me that the
child had lost both of his parents in the war and still thought
that his father was off fighting.

Home At Last
I didn't make it back in Baku until the end of August 1945. I
had sent my family a telegram from Tbilisi, Georgia, so they
could plan to meet me at the station. I had even told them in
which train car I would be riding. But no one came.

When I got off the train in Baku, I was walking with a cane,
with great difficulty. Everyone was crying, as families embraced
the soldiers. I bent down, scooped up a handful of Baku's soil
and kissed it. I kept looking for someone from my family, but
no one was there. I was afraid that something had gone wrong-perhaps
my mother had died.

An army buddy handed me a bunch of flowers that his relatives
had brought him and said, "Let's go to my house." But
I told him "no" and began walking slowly toward the
tram stop towards my own place. My heart was so heavy. Why hadn't
anyone come to meet me?

When I entered our narrow alley, a few children were playing
in the yard. I saw the place where we lived and realized that
one of the two rooms had collapsed. My mother was lying safely
in the other room but she was so weak and listless. As soon as
my sister saw me, she started sobbing. Mother crawled out of
bed, came over and hugged me and began crying, too. That's when
I burst into tears myself.

They told me that they hadn't received my telegram; that's why
they hadn't come. Three days later the postman brought the telegram.
I myself signed for it.

Lost and Found
My family sent three sons into the Soviet Army. My oldest brother,
Aliagha, born in 1916, died in the war. My brother Karim, three
years older than me, went missing in action. Fifty years later
we discovered that he was still alive and living in France.

It's amazing that we found each other again after all that time.
I had been writing a lot of military novels and short stories
that were made available in a number of countries. Somehow my
brother stumbled upon one of them. In 1993, two years after Azerbaijan
had gained its independence from the Soviet Union, we received
a letter from him saying that he was still alive but that he
was afraid to return to Azerbaijan. It didn't matter that the
Soviet Union had already collapsed; he was still afraid.

Keep in mind that Stalin had declared that death was more honorable
than captivity. He made no exceptions even when his own son Yakov
was captured. The story is told how even when the Germans tried
to use his son as a bargaining chip, Stalin had not budged. "Give
us Paulus (one of the German generals), and we'll give you back
your son," they had said. But Stalin allegedly replied:
"I don't normally exchange a regular soldier for a general."

Azerbaijani soldiers who had been captured by the Germans and
then released in a prisoner exchange back to the USSR ended up
being executed or exiled to Siberia. My brother was still afraid
that that would happen to him, even though Stalin had already
been dead for 40 years. Half a century later, he still feared
that he would be arrested and executed as a traitor.

During the war, he had been fighting on the right bank of Dnepr
River1 when he had been injured and transferred to a hospital
there. When the Germans attacked, the wounded were left behind
in the hospital. Those who could flee, did so. The remainder
were captured by the Germans and transferred to Berlin where
they were held in a concentration camp. After the war, my brother
went to France, where he graduated from Lyons University and
became a translator between the Russian and Turkish languages.

You can imagine how shocked and overwhelmed we were to receive
his letter after such a long time. When we finally had the chance
to talk to each other on the phone, we "kind of" had
a conversation. I say "kind of" because we were so
overcome with emotion and tears. I would say: "Karim, is
that you? Where are you?" and then I would start sobbing.
And he would say, "Husein, is that really you?" and
the same thing would happen to him.

Since 1993, my brother has visited us in Baku three times. When
we first saw each other again, he told me that he had even been
afraid to write. He feared the authorities would retaliate against
family members. He was right-during the Soviet times if they
ever suspected that you had a relative living abroad, they created
a lot of trouble for you.

General Aslanov
During the war, it didn't occur to me to ever become a writer,
but I eventually wrote four novels and nearly 100 short stories,
many of them about my experiences during the war. Today I hold
the title, "People's Writer of Azerbaijan". I've made
a collection of my short stories under the title "From Lieutenant
Giyaszade's Diary." Giyaszade was my nickname.

I also wrote a book called "General," which is about
the World War II Azerbaijani General Hazi Aslanov. The first
section of the book was published in 1957. The second part followed
in 1962. I interviewed some of the soldiers who had fought with
Aslanov and also talked to his mother and wife, who were still
living at the time, as were his children.

Then I was given permission to do further research in Stalingrad,
where the Soviets had their first significant victory. After
that battle, the Soviets began pushing the Germans back. Hazi
Aslanov's brigade was one of those that surrounded the German
Army. He became a colonel after Stalingrad and eventually was
recognized as "Hero of the Soviet Union," the highest
national medal of heroism given during the war. An article in
Pravda2 at the time insisted that the enemy "must be hunted
down the way Aslanov does it."

Aslanov was famous for his "flank blow" technique ("jinah
zarbasi" in Azeri or "flangoviy udar" in Russian).
The literal translation is "thrust from flank." During
World War II, tanks were considered the most effective forces
for launching an attack. Aslanov had devised a technique of launching
an attack by heading straight toward the enemy. Meanwhile, other
Soviet troops were sent to attack from the sides.

Hazi Aslanov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union
only once, but actually if he had been treated like Russian heroes,
he should have received it twice. The Soviet government was always
hesitant about acknowledging the contributions of non-Russians
in all fields, whether it be art, music, literature, sports or
science.

The same was true in military science. A number of us Azerbaijani
writers including Anar (Head of the Writers' Union), Yusif Samadoglu,
Suleyman Rustam (secretary of the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan
at the time) and I prepared an official letter appealing to the
Soviet government regarding this matter. They ignored us. Only
after the Black January events in 1990 did they acknowledge the
problem.

Situation with
Armenia
As a veteran of World War II, I would never have dreamed a day
would come when Azerbaijan would be at war and that it would
be the Russians who instigated it. I would never have believed
that two neighbors-Azerbaijan and Armenia-would be enemies, and
that the soldiers of the army in which I once served would be
aiming their guns at my country. I can't understand why Russia
is doing this after we supported them so solidly during World
War II.

During the Karabakh War, our soldiers captured Russian officers
who were fighting on the Armenian side. So, no matter how much
the Armenians try to deny or cover it up, Russians and mercenaries
were fighting with them.

Of the total population of Nagorno-Karabakh, about one-third
were Azerbaijanis. The rest were Armenians who, admittedly, made
up the majority. Nevertheless this was no excuse for our people,
who had lived on those lands for centuries, to be driven out.
The Soviets even took away our shotguns when the Karabakh War
started, but supplied Armenians with everything, including missiles.
They even trained Armenian soldiers in Russia.

So, the 200-year-old lie of the Russian Empire continues. It
was Russia who invaded our cities, towns and villages but insisted
that Armenia was acting alone. But Armenia could never have carried
out such devastation without their help.

Consider also the fact that all the while that Armenia was invading
our lands and killing our people, they were telling the world
that it was Azerbaijan that was the aggressor. Russia supported
Armenia's invasion of our country at the same time that Armenians
were blaming Azerbaijan for the war. But we are the ones who
are the victims of their aggression.

Another thing that I will never be able to comprehend is why
a country like the United States, which is considered to be the
stronghold of peace, justice and democracy, has supported and
still continues to support these liars. The U.S. funnels enormous
amounts of aid to their government, while denying all aid to
ours. I can explain it in no other way than by saying it's just
a continuation of the lies that surround politics, nationalities
and war. It's just like what I first began to realize was happening
when I was recruited into the army nearly 60 years ago.

Footnotes:

1 Dnepr
- A river in Russia that was considered important for the Soviet
Army to cross during World War II. There was an order that whoever
crossed the Dnepr would be named Hero of the Soviet Union.
2 Pravda - One of the main publications of the Soviet Union.